Secretive study paints dire picture at Hanford

By Warren Cornwall

Seattle Times staff reporter

Mismanagement and other problems with cleanup of radioactive pollution at Hanford nuclear weapons factories means the effort could cost as much as 67 percent more than first estimated and take four years longer than promised, according to a closely-guarded federal report.

The study, completed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in May, focused on construction of a plant to seal radioactive waste in glass, considered a key step in cleaning up one of the world's most polluted sites. The report estimated costs could soar $4 billion, from $5.8 billion to $9.65 billion, making it among the most costly construction projects in the country.

It also might not be completed until 2015, instead of the 2011 deadline promised to Washington state officials, according to the Corps report.

The U.S. Department of Energy, which runs Hanford and commissioned the report, has refused to release it to state officials, a citizen oversight panel, the media, and even some members of Congress, including U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash.

The report was leaked to The Seattle Times after months of unsuccessful efforts to get the department to release it under open-records laws.

Critics of the cleanup efforts say the new information contained in the report is but the latest example of serious blunders at Hanford, a 586-square-mile site north of Richland where plutonium production for nuclear weapons left tons of radioactive and toxic waste.

The project has already been delayed for years and dogged by missteps, huge cost increases and technical glitches.

State officials are considering whether they will need to go to court to enforce cleanup deadlines.

"We're not interested in suing the federal government, we're not interested in having a federal judge control the cleanup budget, but we don't have a lot of other options," said Jay Manning, director of the state Department of Ecology.

Energy secretary review

The Department of Energy, headed by Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman, is already taking steps to address problems with the project, including some of those detailed in the report, department spokesman Mike Waldron said Wednesday.

"When the issues related to the waste treatment plant came to the secretary's attention, he immediately began to personally review the project," Waldron said. "And he has been engaged in formulating a path forward."

The Corps also cannot confirm the estimates of cost and schedule overruns, so the department did not want to release unproven information, Waldron said. "Our intention is not to add to any speculation but rather to make commitments that we can keep based on verifiable facts," Waldron said.

But the chairman of a congressional committee that controls the Department of Energy's budget said the report raises legitimate concerns.

"It ought to raise a lot more red flags than just from us," said U.S. Rep. Dave Hobson, R-Ohio, chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Energy and Water. Hobson had seen the report earlier this year because of his leadership position.

"It ought to send real messages that either somebody doesn't know what they're doing, or somebody's not watching the door. We've got to clean it up, but somebody has got to watch out for the taxpayer."

And Sen. Cantwell, who had unsuccessfully sought a copy of the report, Wednesday called on the Bush administration not to withhold information about Hanford.

"If the administration knows more than it is sharing, it has an obligation to the public and certainly its workers, to make known the realities of cleaning up toxic waste," Cantwell said.

Vitrification plant

The cleanup plant is supposed to use a process called vitrification — sealing waste in glass — to treat 53 million gallons of waste held in underground tanks that are vulnerable to corrosion, earthquakes or other damage. Some have already leaked.

Rising costs at the cleanup plant stem partly from the technical difficulties of handling huge volumes of potentially lethal chemicals and radioactive material.

But Corps inspectors found the situation has been compounded by management difficulties within the Department of Energy (DOE) and Bechtel National, the company hired to build the plant.

According to the report, there was little evidence that Bechtel was trying to control costs. In addition, DOE appeared to need more people to oversee the massive and complex project. It also reported that both Bechtel and DOE management were overly optimistic in some assumptions, and reluctant to recognize the potential for higher costs.

"It would appear that a much higher level of DOE oversight is warranted," the report said.

A Bechtel spokeswoman, Carrie Meyer, said she couldn't respond to details in the report because her company also had not been provided a copy of it. But she defended the company's work at Hanford.

"I can say that Bechtel does try to control our costs," Meyer said. "We are trying to do what's right for our customer."

The Corps report was requested by the DOE to get an independent analysis of new cost estimates from Bechtel.

Detailed costs sought

In June, Energy Secretary Bodman ordered an internal review of problems at the project, and formed a team of department officials to help manage work there.

The department has sought a more detailed projection of future costs from Bechtel, and has asked the Corps to again scrutinize it. That review should be finished next year, Waldron said.

But as cost estimates rise, a budget proposal before Congress would cut next year's spending from a target of $690 million to $526 million.

That could delay completion of the plant by several years and drive up the overall cost, said Manning, of the state Ecology Department, which serves as the state's watchdog of Hanford cleanup.

Much of the cost increase is driven by problems designing the one-of-a-kind vitrification factory. Engineers have struggled to figure out how to keep potentially explosive levels of hydrogen gas from building up in pipes, how to mix waste into a form that can be processed, and how to protect against fires.

Most recently, construction was delayed when DOE discovered that its computer models had underestimated the risks posed by earthquakes. Bechtel is now reviewing ways to strengthen the plant.

All told, the project could take 4.6 million more hours of engineering work than projections made in early 2004, according to Bechtel estimates cited by the Corps report. That's the equivalent of 2,300 engineers working full time for a year.

And with such a complex project, the Department of Energy was warned by the federal Government Accountability Office last year that its "fast-track" strategy of simultaneously designing and constructing the treatment plant raised the risk of technical dead-ends and cost overruns.

"History of arrogance"

"We've got a history of arrogance and mismanagement that are leading to cost increases," said Tom Carpenter, a director of nuclear oversight for the Government Accountability Project, a nonprofit watchdog group that is not affiliated with the public Government Accountability Office.

"At what point does Congress lose patience and pull the plug on this thing, which is not a desirable outcome from anyone's viewpoint?"

In the report obtained by The Times, the Corps held out the possibility that costs could be reduced by more aggressive management, and possibly rewriting the contract with Bechtel.

In the meantime, while work has slowed on cleanup of the underground tanks, the DOE has made progress in other parts of Hanford. For example, it has removed spent nuclear fuel rods from water-filled basins, and now is working to clean-up radioactive sludge there.

But earlier this week, the DOE announced that the work will take another two years — rather than a couple of months as initially planned.

Warren Cornwall: 206-464-2311 or wcornwall@seattletimes.com.

Staff reporter Hal Bernton contributed to this report.